1.5 Hold Regular Meetings with Your Coalition

Regular meetings are essential to keeping your coalition strong. Here are some ideas on how to run successful meetings:

Find a time that works for everyone. Although this may be nearly impossible, we’ve found that Fridays during lunch or after 5 p.m. work best. The best advice we can give is to try different meeting times and communicate with coalition members about what works best for them.

Set aside a specific date and time and stick with it. Being consistent will help people plan their schedules. They may be able to keep their calendar clear on, say, the 4th Thursday of the month. If they know they can’t make the meeting, they can send someone to attend in their place. This works especially well if someone is representing an organization.

Provide people with an agenda several days before the meeting. Since most people are busy, they may only want to attend the meetings that interest them or pertain to their area of expertise. And when you send out the agenda, ask people what they would like to discuss and accomplish at the meeting.

Keep the meeting short. Limit it to one hour and stick to it. You want to honor people’s time and commitment. If the meeting is running long, cut it off and say you will be available for questions afterward.

Provide free food at the meetings. More people will attend, and it is always a less-threatening and more comfortable atmosphere when people meet over a meal or even snacks. For ideas on how to pay for this, see Module 1.8 .Seek Funding for Your Coalition.

Make meetings fun and engaging.There’s nothing worse than a boring meeting that accomplishes nothing and wastes time. Planning ahead and thinking of fun, engaging activities will go a long way to keeping people interested, participating, and attending meetings.

In subsequent meetings, you’ll want to:

Continue to build your team. Some people may not be interested in joining your team right away. Team membership will be fluid, and team building should be an on-going process.

Identify roles for each coalition member. Talk openly and honestly about each person’s strengths and weaknesses. Talk about things that people can do and don’t want to do.

Talk about each person’s learning style. Think how you can best accommodate how people learn. For example, some people may learn better visually, while others verbally. For more information on learning styles, visit teach.com.

Determine what types of training people need. Find out who is interested in participating in a child passenger restraint training. Module 7 provides an example of the training people can participate in. This training is also available through Indian Health Service Safe Native American Passengers (SNAP). Visit SNAP website to learn more. You’ll want to offer a training within the first few months after the coalition starts.

Go over the car seat safety campaign in more detail.Explain the goals and plans again, and continue to answer any questions or concerns attendees may have.

Monitor the size of the coalition.The smaller the coalition, the easier you’ll be able to work together. The bigger a group gets, the longer your meetings run, and the more people start to disengage, withdraw, and separate. But it’s still wise to keep your meetings open for others to join.

The next step is to determine what is the best APPROACHto address the issue you identified in your tribal community. At this juncture you need to think back to what you may have learned so far such as what you heard from your coalition, acquired from your community readiness.

The different intervention approaches are:

Awareness

Health education

Behavior change

Health or Safety practice

Environment/Policy

AWARENESS interventions strive to inform the public about particular public health issues, concerns, and solutions. This approach works well for people who do not know that children under 4’9” should ride in a booster seat, for example. Or, perhaps the community is not aware of a new child passenger safety law. Your job will be to tell them. Examples of awareness interventions may include the following:

Media campaigns (newspaper, billboards, public service announcements)

Written publications (brochures, leaflets, documents)

Printed messages (posters, displays)

Informal Messaging (social media)

See Module 7 for help with media interventions. HEALTH EDUCATIONinterventions give people information on safe choices. You might teach them more about correct installation of a child safety seat, or share some of your community’s data on barriers to car seat use. You could share strategies for improving child safety seat use and connect people with community resources, like your distribution program or a child passenger safety seat technician. Examples of health education interventions include:

Classroom instruction

Educational handouts

Hands-on demonstration

See Module 8 for help with education interventions. BEHAVIOR CHANGEinterventions strive to create a physical environment that supports, promotes, and encourages the healthy behaviors that address the issues. Examples of behavior change interventions include the following:

Creating supportive social networks

Making local resources that support healthy behaviors available

Establishing healthy norms

Developing talking circles and support groups

HEALTH AND SAFETY PRACTICE approaches foster health or safety promotion by supporting existing tribal or community health programs, throughproviding support to enhance existing programs at the community level or change the health or safety practices with in that program. Examples health and safety practice include the following:

Working with hospital delivery nurses to assure that children leave the hospital in car seats

Working with Head Start programs to train and maintain certified child passenger safety technician to help parent correctly install seats.

ENVIRONMENT AND POLICY INTERVENTIONS strive to establish and enforce practices, policies, or laws that promote healthy behaviors and discourage unhealthy choices. This type of intervention usually takes the longest amount of time to achieve, but has the greatest potential for lasting impact. Examples of environment and policy interventions include:

Enacting tribal policies and resolutions

Mandating specific programs

Creating drop off areas at tribal daycare where car seat use can be viewed